Dave's Transforming Robot Toy Rant: Metal Cardbots wave 1

Outlaw Trailer Truck Heavy Iron (tractor-trailer)

Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/misc/Cardbot6

http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/misc/Cardbot1 has details about the line
in general, trade dress, etc.

This big guy is his own class, called Road Warrior Class, but there's probably not going to be another in this class (the biggest figure of wave 2
is only $45).


CAPSULE

$65 singly from Agabyss.com, I got the full wave for $213.

Heavy Iron: While I saved the biggest for last, it's not really the
best. Articulation is a bit too limited, plus it's a partformer without the excuse of the cab turning into a smaller robot on its own. Mildly
recommended.


RANT

The sticker sheet that came with the full wave has not just the usual alternate windows/eyes, but also a bunch of metal paneling sort of striped pieces to put on the trailer sides.

Packaging: Huge box, 13.75" (35cm) tall, 11.75" (30cm) wide, and 4.5" (11.5cm) deep. It otherwise conforms with the style of the other boxes, including having no actual pictures or renders of the toy, just animation models.
The instructions make it clear that this is a partformer. The torso becomes the tractor, while the limbs assemble to make the trailer.


OUTLAW TRAILER TRUCK: HEAVY IRON
Altmode: Tractor-trailer
Transformation Difficulty: 24 steps (robot to vehicle), 7 steps (card gear) Card Gear: Iron Armor
Motto: "Our planet was the greatest in the galaxy. It should be called an
honor for Earth to be part of its reconstuction."

According to the fan wiki, this guy was the final boss of season 1, dedicated to reviving the Machina homeworld by aggressive colonization of Earth. So...evil Optimus Prime. This was also called Heavy Iron in the original.

Packaging: As big as the box is, it's not oversized, the robot mode
really does need that much space. The arm blade weapon is in the lower left corner of the clamshell, while the Card Gear is in the lower right, face
out.

Robot Mode: When I first saw pictures of this guy he was described as
Evil Optimus Prime, and that's about right. Take Optimus's usual colors but add a lot of black, and give him a big helmet with extra fins and spikes
almost like he was trying to adapt Starscream's crown into a Powermaster Optimus Prime outer helmet. Even when the Iron Armor isn't attached, the
cab's windows are covered up on the chest by a sort of M-like chest shield,
and for some reason there's fake headlights mounted inside the oversized shoulderpads stuck to the upper outer corners of the already oversized shoulders. The cab's rear wheels are folded up onto the back, while the trailer wheels are mostly hidden on the sides of the tall boots (you can use transformation sliders to make the boots even taller if you want). The smokestacks are pulled up onto either side of the head as cannons, which is a nice touch I think more Optimus Prime toys should try. There's no ankle articulation as usual for this line, so the default stance has the legs each one ratchet click away from straight down.
There's a few minor color differences between the toy and the packaging
in this mode, mostly in how the helmet of the animation model has a lot more red, and the forearm red and gold pattern is different between the two. Oh, and the animation model's fists are black while the toy's are gray, which affects the colors of the trailer as well. The main mold difference is that the animation model has a distinct abdomen betweem the bottom of the truck
and the waist (it'd be a centimeter or so tall at this scale) while the toy
has the bottom of the cab directly attached to the belt.
The robot is 10.75" (27cm) tall at the head, or 11.5" (29cm) tall to the tops of the shoulderpads. The coloration is mostly dark blue, bright red, light gray, dark gray, and black, with some accents in clear blue, metallic light blue, and gold. Bright red plastic is used for the forehead, crest,
and "ears" of the head, the chest front panels, most of the shoulder fronts, panels on the outer faces of the shoulders, the taillights atop the backpack, the centerline of each boot from kneecap down to toe, and bits on the back of the boots that are sort of heels. Dark blue plastic makes up most of the
upper torso, the bottom third or so of the head, the center of the backpack, and the outer panels of the boots. Clear light blue is used for the visor
over the eyes, fake headlights on the shoulderpads, the real headlights and
fog lamps on the abdomen, the weapon blade, and some little bits on the backs of the boots. Dark gunmetal gray plastic makes up the slide-in part of the shoulder connections, the strut holding the shoulderpads, biceps, elbows, waist, thighs, and some struts inside the backpack. Actual black plastic is part of the top of the head, parts of the shoulder fronts and shoulderpads,
the upper and inner faces of the forearms, the pelvis, the inner knee joints, the outer bits of the backpack, centers of the calves, a small cannon barrel
on the blade weapon core, and all the wheels. Light gray plastic makes up
the rest of the shoulderpads and shoulders, the sockets for attaching the
arms, the smokestack cannons, the top center of the backpack, the outer faces of the arms, the fists, the bottom of the torso, the grille and headlight borders on the torso front, outer plates on the thighs, the rest of each
boot, and the core of the blade weapon.
And despite all these plastic colors, there's still a LOT of paint in
the plastic colors, such as black on the sternum, thigh fronts, vents on the thigh sides, kneecaps, outer shins, sides of the boots, toe tops, bits on the back of the boots, sides of the blade, and a bit on the lower head. There's even more that's mainly visible in vehicle mode, such as the trailer panels
on the backs of the arms. The centers of the shoulders are painted dark
blue, and some bits at the top front edges of the shoulders are painted
bright red and dark blue. Other dark blue is on the back of the waist and pelvis, for some reason. There's red on the forearm tops along with some
gold, red stripes on either side of the black thigh fronts, a red M on a
black painted field on either side of the blade weapon core, and some other mainly-vehicle bits. The faceplate is silver paint on what looks to be red plastic, and the eyes might be painted silver, they're behind clear blue plastic. There's bits of silver on the chestplate as well. Other gold paint includes the belt buckle, bits on the lower kneecap area, stripes on the
sides of the thighs, and winding stripes on the sides of the boots. A
metallic light blue paint is used a bunch of places where I guess they
decided to not try putting in clear blue plastic, including the forehead center, the roof lights along the top of the chest, little bits on the gold parts of the shins, and vents on the back. And just because, there's non- metallic light blue in a triangle on the chestplate in the nook of the M.
The neck is the standard (for this line) ball joint with the socket in
the collar, no problems with it popping out. The waist is a ratcheting
swivel, 45 degrees per click, can rotate all the way around. The shoulder attachment clips are on ratcheting swivels of 45 degrees each, while the
upper arms are on ratcheting hinges to lift to the sides...a little. They
can move up to two 20 degree clicks before trailer kibble gets in the way. Similarly, the elbows are soft-ratchets with two arm positions: straight and bent 45 degrees away from straight (kibble blockage again). There's actually molding that makes it look like the elbows are dual-joint struts, but that's purely decorative. No wrist articulation, the transformation hinge just
allows a little wiggling. Hip swivels are 30 degrees per click ratches and
can go from three clicks straight forwards to two clicks backwards. The lifting hinges on the hips are 10 degree ratchets and can go to 5 clicks
before the trailer kibble on the thighs gets in the way. The unarticulated foot positions are for the hips to be one click away from vertical on each side. The knees are ratchet hinges 10 degrees per click and can go from straight to seven clicks back. There's ratcheting swivels just below the knees, 10 degrees per click but blocked from going more than 2 clicks outward by the kneepads hitting thigh details.
While covered in various clips mainly meant for transformation
attachment, there's also rods on the forearms for clipping the blade weapon onto either one. The fists do not have circular openings, instead irregular quadrilaterals that are too narrow for 5mm pegs and too wide for 3mm pegs. There's clip sites on the chest for attaching the Iron Armor. A peg folds up from the belt buckle in a way that's not suggestive at all, noooo. It's for the trailer, and is 6mm in diameter, so not really useful for anything else. The 6mm socket for this is on top of the torso behind the head.
Since the Card Gear is purely defensive, they gave him a sort of forearm blade with a little cannon barrel on it. Unfolded, it's 4.25" (11cm) long
with a hinge on the cutting side of the blade so it can fold in two for
vehicle mode storage. The blade is clear blue plastic with black paint on
the non-edge parts of the sides, to give the impression of solidity rather
than being a pure energy blade. It can attach to either forearm using a
black plastic clip inside the light gray core section, but can't store
anywhere else in this mode. If you're willing to leave a gap in the roof of the trailer, it can technically be mounted on either forearm clip, as they're on top of the trailer in vehicle mode. You do have to decide before the end
of transformation if you want to store it or not, though, as it requires snapping pieces shut around tabs on the back of the core chunk.

Card Gear: Unlike most, this is made of both clear and opaque plastic (which led me to spending some time trying to see if the side arms extended). The Iron Armor is just a chestplate, not even with guns on it. The
attachment points on back stick out, so it can't really lie flat and is slightly thicker than most.
The faceplate is dark blue plastic and can be attached in either orientation. If you neglect to fold down the red plastic part, you could
even leave it attached when placing it on Heavy Iron's chest, although the
card would block his face.
The Card Gear is mostly clear light blue/aqua plastic like the clear
bits on Heavy Iron, with a few bits of bright red plastic. The majority of
the back of the card folds out into two wings, while little mandible-ish bits fold down from the bottom corners of the middle layer. The top of the front layer folds down on two hinges (which are clear plastic, yay) to let a red plastic bit take the frontmost surface while clear blue bits snap together to secure it. The wings end in almost-triangle trapezoidal wedges of red
plastic, and the attachment clips are on their backs, so the Card Gear can
only connect to Heavy Iron when the wings are swung out.
The "wingspan" is 4.75" (12cm) and the overall look is like an 8-bit
robot fly as it might look in a game's manual. The wings have pale gold and black paint in their panels, the mandibles have black paint behind the
recessed bits. The red plate has a symbol in bold gold outlined in black
that doesn't look like any of the other symbols on Heavy Iron, it kind of
looks like a stealth bomber pointed downwards. There's also black over some
of the abdomen bit of it. On the non-wing part of the back there's a couple
of rectangular tabs that don't go into anything, they just make sure that
when the Iron Armor is snapped onto Heavy Iron's chest there won't be any gap to make things floppy or easily snapped.
Heavy Iron looks decent from the front when the Iron Armor is attached, but it makes an already thick chest even deeper. Too bad it can't also
attach to a forearm, they could have made the bars there more compatible.
Okay, technically you can get it to attach to a forearm, but not solidly, because the bar on the forearm isn't quite long enough to make room for the block around the clips on the Card Gear. (The lack of a bicep swivel also means it is held awkwardly at best anyway.)

Transformation: It takes a bit of effort to get the arms removed, but
once I was sure I wasn't pulling the wrong way and risking breakage, the
other arm was simple enough. While it took me a few tries to find all the joints and sliders in the arms and legs, it wasn't actually that difficult to combine them and the stored arm blade into a trailer. The cab was relatively simple as well, although it took me a few tries to get the head positioned properly so that the trailer could attach...the head just sits behind the
cab, it needs to face forwards and tilt down a bit to ensure it clears the waist joint on the front of the cab. The slider bit to cover the left fist requires a LOT of force to move (there's not much leverage to grab it, at
least the right fist has a peg sticking out that helps).
Going back to robot mode is pretty basic, although you have to remember
to undo some of the bits that block folding (like the panels from the outer faces of the robot's shoulders that lock the arms straight). By the third time, it took me less than a minute to get back to robot mode.

Vehicle Mode: Okay, it's a tractor-trailer, and the trailer has a bump
up in back with vents that reminds me of Motormaster's cab, oddly. The
trailer is pretty lumpy even ignoring all the gaps and stuff on the roof, but the cab would be okay if not for the robot head just sitting there ahead of
the hitch socket. The side window areas are a little awkward because they didn't leave enough room for the chestplate halves to sit flush, and you can tell that they prioritized robot mode for the smokestacks because their
hollow sides face forwards in this mode. (I wonder what would've had to get cut to let the smokestacks be solid.)
The toy is pretty close to the animation model on the box, although the box does kinda cheat by using a low camera angle so any differences on the
top of the trailer are hidden. The front of the trailer is a bit differently colored because of the fists being gray, and I guess in the cartoon the robot kneecaps kinda vanish (a downside of the low angle view, it's clear that the underside of the trailer disagrees). I'm not sure what the point of the sticker sheet is for the sides of the trailer, since the toy actually matches the render there. The windshield stickers do include eye patterns closer to the render, as the toy decided to give the eyes both gold and white lines for some reason instead of just gold like in the animation model.
On its own, the cab is your basic Optimus Prime sort of cabover rig with smokestacks on the back side rather than the outer corners, mostly in darker colors with an angry expression in the eyes (the visor piece comes down to a point to look like angry eyebrows). Unfortunately, it also has a robot head sitting behind the cab...although if you're willing to remove pieces, the
head does pop out easily enough when you try (the bracing by the smokestack cannons in robot mode makes this harder). Not that there's anywhere else to store the head.
The cab is 6" (15cm) long and mostly dark blue, black, and light gray
with some accents in red, silver, and clear blue. Light gray plastic makes
up the front windows, grille, headlight frames, bumper, bottom third of the
cab section including the fuel tanks on what would be thighs if this transformed into a robot on its own (it doesn't), smokestacks, most of the headache rack in back of the cab, the license plate holder area in back, and the hubs of all six wheels. The visor, wheels, and most of the rear fenders are made of glossy black plastic, while several hinges (for the smokestacks, the side window pieces, and the head section mostly) are dull black plastic. The side window pieces are dark blue plastic backing the bright red plastic chest sections so they have red borders, and the rest of the cab is dark blue plastic. Most of the taillights are also red plastic, except the ones
flanking the absent license plate (he's an outlaw, he doesn't need no
stinking LICENSE PLATE). The headlights and foglamps (the ones embedded in
the bumper) are clear light blue plastic. There's some dark gunmetal plastic visible on either side of the trailer hitch.
The front windows are painted very glossy black with the "iris" bits
being painted pale gold on the inner lines and white on the outer lines. The side windows are slightly less glossy black, with gold stripes under them. There's a silver stripe along the centerline of the cab top, and molded slats between the smokestacks are painted black. There's little painted-red
diagonal lights flanking where there should be a license plate.
The robot head is what it is.
As noted above, the trailer peg is 6mm (well, 5.7mm if you want to get picky) in diameter, so no swapping with Primes even if the height works out. There's also no parking stand, so when disconnected from the cab the trailer just leans over on the peg. There's no other useful connection points on the cab, although the waist socket is a big sorta-rectangular hole in the
underside of the cab.
On its own, the trailer is...well, I've seen worse trailers. There's
lots of gaps and color discontinuities because it's basically a place to
stick the limbs (much like Motormaster's trailer in the most recent version
of the Stunticons), although at least it doesn't require any extra pieces not from the robot to hold together. Once it's all snapped together correctly, it's very solid, but not overly difficult to disassemble. The sides bulge
out a little, as they started with a standard box trailer and then had to
make room inside for slightly wider cargo in back, and added a refrigerator unit on top in the back.
8.5" (21.5cm) long including the waist peg in front (which is too low to be a standard refrigeration unit), most of the plastic visible is light
gray. There's some red robot mode plastic visible on top and bottom, plus
the taillights are intentionally red plastic. The trailer peg and tires are black plastic, plus some robot mode black plastic is visible on top. The chunks holding the wheels are dark blue plastic.
The slat-patterned parts of the sides are painted gloss black, as are
the two roof unit vents and the rear door. There's a darker gold paint
stripe along each side which has molded the same M-like motif as the weapon
but it's not picked out in a separate color. There's a red stripe in a sort
of / leading into a horizontal line on the blue parts, as well as a bit more black paint on them. YThe sticker sheet has about a third of its total space dedicated to covering most of the remaining light gray on the sides with pale purple and light gray alternating horizontal stripes, plus some pale purple triangles over where the mold has recessed triangles. I'll be leaving the stickers off, thanks.
The forearm connection points are on top near the front as mentioned
when describing the weapon, and the 5.7mm peg is on the bottom in front. There's one screw hole on each side near the rear that can hold a 5mm peg loosely.
Together, the whole thing is 12.25" (31cm) long and the cab can turn
about 45 degrees before the robot head hits a corner of the trailer. It
rolls decently on a surface that's not too smooth (it kinda slides on my desk because of the knubbly tires). This is true of the cab on its own as well, although being lighter means the tires are a little more likely to spin on a smooth surface.


Overall: While not technically a G1-style brick, a lot of the
articulation is very limited either directly, or by the fact the figure can't really use the leg joints much without falling over (ankles become really important here and Heavy Iron doesn't have any). It's the sort of partformer
a Transformers fan might expect from a Super Armor type like Powermaster Optimus Prime or Ultra Magnus, but without the cab turning into a smaller
robot on its own. It's...okay. Maybe there was just too much build-up for
it and I'm feeling let down, but there's so many ways this could've been a better toy with minor changes, and while cheaper than an equivalently sized Transformer it's still a bit expensive for "okay".


Dave Van Domelen, hasn't put any of the stickers on any of the toys, but might go back and use some of the faction symbol stickers.


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* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)